Free Republic

LONDON: The bacon and sausage on your plate or those steaming hot pies are increasing your chances of premature death from cancer and heart disease. Processed meat is to blame for one in 30 early deaths, a large-scale study has now found. The EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition) study involving 10 countries and 23 centres in Europe and almost half a million people has found that risk of premature death increased with the amount of processed meat eaten by a person. According to the study, even one sausage a day is bad for your health. The researchers...

A RINO can be extremely dangerous when he uses Moral Equivalency to advance his political schemes, and a discerning conservative should know how to identify a RINO by his tactics. According to Websters Online Dictionary, Moral Equivalence is: “…a term used in political debate, usually to criticize any denial that a moral hierarchy can be assessed of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides. It could be considered a form of the rhetorical fallacy of equivocation.” In plain terms, when a politician uses Moral Equivalency he is attempting to equate an immoral position...

The number of Americans who believe -- wrongly -- that President Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now account for nearly 20 percent of the nation's population. Those results, from a new Pew Research Center survey, were drawn from interviews done before the president's comments about the construction of an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, and they suggest that there could be serious political danger for the White House as the debate continues. The president's religion, like his place of birth, has been the subject of Internet-spread rumors and falsehoods since before he began...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has signed on to the latest high-profile effort to re-brand the Republican Party — but don't expect to see him take a major leadership role for the National Council for a New America, or make a starring appearance at any of the events on the group's national tour. Organizers of the effort, spearheaded by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, originally told reporters that Gingrich had not been included in the newly-launched group because his 527, American Solutions, was a partisan entity. (The organization describes itself as a "tri-partisan" network.) Gingrich supporters dismissed...

WASHINGTON, Jul 13 (IPS) - Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tonnes in 2006. Of this, 14 million tonnes will be used to produce fuel for cars in the United States, leaving only 6 million tonnes to satisfy the world's growing food needs. In agricultural terms, the world's appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain to...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The rival Hamas and Fatah movements agreed on a plan implicitly recognizing Israel, a top Palestinian official said Tuesday after weeks of acrimonious negotiations aiming to lift crippling international aid sanctions. Moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has been trying to coax his Hamas rivals into endorsing the document, which calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, in effect recognizing the Jewish state. He has endorsed the plan as a way to end sanctions against the Hamas-led Palestinian government and pave the way to reopening peace talks with Israel. "We have an agreement over the...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. OK, let´s suspend the bashing of President Bush and his Democratic presidential opponent John Kerry for their stupefyingly awful records and platforms on trade policy. Let´s turn instead to how their utter inability to understand America´s globalization challenges will sandbag other major policies they´re pitching. To date, there´s no better example than Bush´s goal of turning America into an “opportunity society.” Anyone who likes free markets and capitalism, will rightly love the concept of an ownership society; and it´s no wonder that the Republicans are making it a centerpiece of their...

A family maid tells her storyTwo weeks into the war in Iraq, the maid realized something was up when her boss, Saddam Hussein's nephew, told her to bone up on a Tikriti accent so that she wouldn't attract attention as a Baghdadi when the family moved north. Two days later, she says, she found herself in a convoy of cars with Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, headed for a rendezvous in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, with the Iraqi dictator. The 18-year-old woman, who spoke to TIME on condition of anonymity, was a live-in employee of Farhan Ibrahim Migdal al-Dolaymi, who resided...

What’s Next? Posted on April 15, 2003 Well, it looks like we are about to win the war in Iraq ... no surprise there. The U.S. military is so powerful that we can pretty much overpower any country we want at this point - but does that mean we should? The 117 American and 31 British soldiers dead so far and the countless number of Iraqi deaths (and now we are told we may never know the actual number of Iraqi civilians and military personnel killed) are thousands of deaths too many. And now the question is ...what's next? Will...

My Thoughts Today Posted on Feb. 20, 2003 A few things caught my eye this past weekend...among them: Condoleezza Rice on Meet the Press: Condoleezza Rice wants us to believe that one of the reasons for invading Iraq is to save the poor Iraqi people who are being persecuted by Saddam Hussein. But what about our own soldiers and Iraqi civilians who will be killed in the process? Ms. Rice knows the real reason we are invading Iraq right now, she just doesn't want to say it because it doesn't sound quite as noble as saving the Iraqi people. The...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New U.S. pollution rules announced on Monday will do little to control "factory farm" manure runoff fouling the nation's waters, environmental groups said. Farm groups say complying with the rules will cost livestock producers $1 billion a year, likely putting some out of business. The measures cover manure handling, require nutrient management plans and mandate more record-keeping. About 15,500 cattle, hog and poultry feedlots will be required to obtain permits by 2006 under the Clean Water Act and write plans for safe disposal of manure, often used as...